Ruby on Rails from the other side of the tracks

A 20-minute chat at the London Ruby User Group (from August 2006) about how to get client-side-developers, and even designers, involved in the process of making applications with Rails - helping them get involved in the templating process. It then diverges into a client-side perspective on Rails, looking in particular at issues around Javascript and Ajax, and XHTML testing. Because of its slide-heavy nature, it’s fairly self explanatory, but obviously you’ll miss out on some of the discussion around the talk (which was excellent).

32.
if @items.size > 0
<ul class=’someclass’>
for item in @items
<li><%= item.name=></li>
end
</ul>
else
<p>You have no items</p>
end
(Best).

33.
How?
Get them into source control
If you explain it well enough,
everyone loves version control
Collaborate on working wireframes
Answer their questions
Ask them questions
Intervene (eg with helpers)

43.
The problems with Prototype
Scaffolding gives you bad habits:
<%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>
That’s 146kb on your page load
And it loads serially
Use what you need
You don’t even need Prototype
for basic JavaScript

53.
Seriously, though:
Javascript has thorny
accessibility issues.
AJAX can be really inaccessible:
Screenreaders
Not just screenreaders
Well-written Javascript goes a
long way to make things easier

54.
“Hijax”
Write without Javascript
Then progressively add it, focusing
on ids and classnames to act as
hooks
Best of both worlds
Yes, this doesn’t work for some
apps - but Web 2.0 doesn’t need
to mean “inaccessible” all the time.